OMG who put an ebay advert up there!

[Guest]

[Morningangel-Iola]

At the top of the shack oh dear this is just asking for trouble not to mention encouragement  Not that we need it 

[Nienna]

Well if you think about it, most of us frequent at one time or another so why not use the affiliate link and earn Roz and Mark some pennies by doing it!?
I agree though ... a terrible temptation to spend yet more dosh!  

[Roz]

We did - and yes we realise it's asking for trouble... you see we have been looking for ways to make the price guide better... not to say that it isn't already excellent... but Mark's now done the graphs and I suppose he has itchy fingers

We have been looking at ways to access the ebay database directly, the price guide is changing all the time, more and more cards are being added so the general idea of this  is to make entering data into the guide easier and more efficient. The idea would be that all you would need to do would be to put in the auction number and the price guide would strip out the end date, the final price etc. However access to that database is very costly. Very costly indeed - $500 a year costly! So we are trying to find ways to get around that by:

a) drum up the cash to pay for this (which we aren't going to do with the ads at the top I assure you - not over even a whole year, probably not even over a decade, for the first 800 bids per month we would receive something like 5p per bid, after that it would be more - but can you see them getting more than about 5 bids? No I don't either )

b) we think there may be a way to get data from them cheaply if we are affiliates (hence the above ad) although it is not yet clear whether that data is for live auctions only. (i.e. not the completed items we need).

Anyway that's the thought process of where we are going with this - short of passing a hat round for everyone to put a few dollars into lol it may still come to that

But by displaying the ad and people clicking on it we will show as active affiliates (or maybe people need to bid on auctions for us to look active, I really don't know yet) we may be in a position as a non-profit team to get small quantities of data free of charge... although I don't really know.

The point is we need to be active affiliates to find out

If anyone is thinking of signing up to ebay then please go to the price guide and refresh until the sign up page comes on - that will show us as REALLY serious affiliates ... anyway - I'm just thinking outloud here. We are in test phase

[Morningangel-Iola]

Very good plan bat man ecspecally as most of us are ebay addicts anyway You dangle Potter in front of me and I'm all yours 

[Nienna]

  Roz sure knows how to punch our buttons!
Fingers crossed it will be a useful link m'duck!

[kbmum]

At first, I thought that clicking on the link would bring up the eBay UK site, which might be problematic for US bidders.  I tried it, and the link goes to the US site for people in the US.

Do you get any money if people click on the link, or does a person have to bid for that to happen?

[Morningangel-Iola]

Well I jsut clicked the view all items and found some I hadn't seen. Encluding this one which is a stonker

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6188133649

Shack powered by ebay has a certain ring to it, maybe one day

 

[Roz]

Fingers crossed too, but if the link isn't catching everything we are interested in then let me know - 101 items seems very small

The current search string is in the trading card section for:

(Autograph, Costume, Prop) ("Sorcerer s Stone", "Sorcerers Stone")

Which tells it to search for one of autograph, costume or prop, and either sorcerer's or sorcerers stone.

I suppose it could be auto but the first time we tried that a BMW showed up what was THAT doing in the trading card section Stray spare top trumps card perhaps?



Any help refining the search string with what you guys use would be great - I am used to searching through the UK site so the US site is a bit weird to me.

Please note that if you are outside the US you can still use the link the only thing different with .com is that you don't get the useful translation of currency (there is no UK affiliate link thingy yet) so don't be afraid to click above and help us to "get active"


P.S. Cindy no, it only seems to be if people bid... but I am sure they monitor clicks so even clicking through might make us look big either way I hope to replace it with a search bar later on where you just search in a box on the forum taking you to ebay... although from what I have seen that's not possible yet - we might have to write our own code. Of course it would be possible to add a link to search for each card in the price guide next to the guide price... that might be a good place to put it - but do we want out price guide madly ebay-ified??? Then again it's always been about closed ebay auctions, would it actually HELP to have a link to the current ones next to the guide price do you think?

[allender]

Well, maybe it will give affiliate credit for all bids made after you sign in from the link, until you sign out? That could add up to quite a bit at (say) 5p a bid, because some of us bid on a lot of auctions that we don't expect to win. 

[Roz]

No it's only the first bid anyone makes after coming on to the shack

So if you anyone is feeling helpful - pop back to the Shack en route if we can use the ebay database directly I think it will open up opportunities like never before for the price guide.

[Sharon]

Sorry silly question time.  To get the 5p is this correct;

Log onto Shack and click link.  Make bid then log off Ebay.  Click back onto link, log on etc.....  If this is right I reckon we could turn this
into a profit making concern    No seriously if it is this easy I am in (loadas money) 

Ok I just made a bid on a Bad Taste Bear.  It will be interesting to know if this counts 

[Roz]

He ehee - we can check the time you made your bid and tomorrow see if it turns up on the system

Thanks for having a bash Sharon... but what's a bad taste bear?

[MakTheYak]

You shouldn't ask - you might get told :p

[Morningangel-Iola]

Question, if we use the link and then change it to co.uk once its up will that lose the connection to the shack?

[Roz]

I think so yes - there's no ebay.co.uk affiliate system yet

[Morningangel-Iola]

I thought so thats why I didn't do it before I bid.